Successful predictions on a rational basis of the biological activity of compounds leading to new drugs are the main objective of drug designers. This has usually been achieved by considering a known bioactive molecule as the basis for structural modifications, either by the group or biofunctional moieties approach or by altering the overall physical-chemical properties of the molecule. Thus, the main aim has been to design, synthesize, and test new compounds structurally analogous to the basic bioactive molecule which have, however, improved therapeutic and/or pharmacokinetic properties. Although "vulnerable" moities have been identified as the ones whose role is the bioinactivation or metabolic elimination of the drug after it has performed its role, little or no attention has been paid in the drug-design process to the rational design of the metabolic disposition of the drugs. This has been the case despite the fact that the toxicity of a number of bioactive molecules is due to their increased elimination half-life, stability, or other factors introduced during the design of increasing their activity. Drugs and particularly their metabolic processes contribute to the various toxic processes by formation of active metabolites. The phenomenon of metabolic activation to macromolecules is the initial step in cell damage. It is also clear that the most toxic metabolites will not survive long enough to be excreted and identified; thus, studies of the stable metabolites may provide misleading information.
It is clear that, in order to prevent and/or reduce toxicity problems related to drugs, the metabolic disposition of the drugs should be considered at an early stage of the drug-design process. This is true particularly when one considers that the body can attack and alter chemically quite stable structures and that, even if a drug is 95% excreted unchanged, the unaccounted small portion can, and most likely will, cause toxicity.
"Soft drugs" can be defined as biologically active chemical compounds (drugs) which might structurally resemble known active drugs (soft analogues) or could be entirely new types of structures, but which are all characterized by a predictable in vivo destruction (metabolism) to nontoxic moieties, after they achieve their therapeutic role. The metabolic disposition of the soft drugs takes place with a controllable rate in a predictable manner.
The present inventor has found five major classes of soft drugs. One of the most useful classes was termed the "inactive metabolite" approach which can be advantageously employed to design especially valuable "soft drugs." This approach starts with a known inactive metabolite of a drug or a drug class; followed by modifying the metabolite to resemble structurally (isoteric and/or isoelectronic) the active drug (i.e., activation); and designing the metabolism of the activated species to lead to the starting inactive metabolite after achieving the desired therapeutic role, without the formation of toxic intermediates (i.e., predictable metabolism). The "inactive metabolite" approach further allows controlling the rate of metabolism and pharmacokinetic properties by molecular manipulation in the activation stage. Also, if no useful inactive metabolite is known, one can be designed by the introduction of transporting groups in noncritical structural parts.